May 3, 2026

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

June 1944, tennis racket lying on the blood-stained Normandy beachhead.

Ernie Pyle, the war correspondent, datelined three columns right after the June 6th D-day invasion. In one, he wrote, “Soldiers carry strange things ashore with them. In every invasion you’ll find at least one soldier hitting the beach at H-hour with a banjo slung over his shoulder. The most ironic piece of equipment marking our beach – this beach of first despair, then victory – is a tennis racket that some soldier had brought along. It lies lonesomely on the sand, clamped in its rack, not a string broken.”

That racket was American hope, optimism, a hoped-for good luck piece, the memory of peaceful times, the value of immigration to citizenry, all held by a citizen soldier, perhaps one of the 2,500 fallen at Normandy. It is today, almost 82 years later, a metaphor for the importance of the American Story.

G.I. Joe, the one who carried that racket from home to his place in the order of battle, probably was thinking of times without war, out with friends in an old jalopy he picked up for $25. He was also carrying a M1 rifle and a full pack of ammunition, food, water, first-aid pouch, an entrenching tool to dig a foxhole. Those were his gear now, and instead of the glee and warmth of friends at play, he was in fear and uncertainty, hoping to survive with his Army buddies.

But the racket was there too, at least until it fell, perhaps with him, on the Normandy beachhead.

The American Story, still being written, has many chapters: The hope of the founding fathers as expressed in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, checks and balances; the warning from Benjamin Franklin that we have a republic “if you can keep it”; the inhumanity of slavery, lynchings, deliberate denial of civil rights and inequality rising from prejudice, ignorance and even guilt; growing greed and job loss; and in contrast, hope for the world in a surviving democratic republic that at times acknowledges its faults and sets out to correct them. As Lincoln said, we are “the last best hope of earth,” highlighting the nation’s potential to uphold freedom and justice.

When Joe parted with his tennis racket at Normandy, the hope of his – our – nation was not covered by the bloodied sand. It was carried on to Berlin, to Tokyo, to beyond, and the soldiers and other military who did return as citizens, not military, once again saw to it that they would pick up the racket and metaphorically play again in new American chapters.

What will be written next in our America, after what is being written now in these perilous times? Joe wants to know.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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